No team can be starting the 2017 F1 season under as great a weight of expectations as McLaren. After three consecutive years of historically sub-par performances, the once front-running team has seen significant change at the helm, a revised driver line-up, and several high-profile dismissals in their latest effort to reassert their claim to a slot in the head of the pack.
Speaking to the world's media and assembled fans at their Woking launch on Friday morning, McLaren racing director Eric Boullier was careful not to make any promises regarding performance that might later prove embarrassing. Rather than confidently predicting a season of podium finishes and occasional race wins, across the board the senior team personnel were all on message when it came to managing expectations.
Podiums would be lovely, wins would be lovelier, but for the moment McLaren's main ambition is to continue the process of steady improvement seen over the course of 2016. While bedding in the Honda power unit has taken longer than anticipated, if the same trajectory of slow but steady progress carries on into 2017, then there is a chance that the Woking racers could be in the mix for the first time in half a decade.
Indications are not so positive, however. Behind the scenes there are rumours that the newest version of the Honda power unit remains underpowered when compared with its rivals, and casting an inexpert eye over the MCL32 on launch the car looks to be significantly more substantial -- heftier, even -- than the others we've seen so far. If the car is as heavy as it looks, 2017 could prove to be another annus horribilis for the team.
On the sponsor and partnership fronts, things are looking a little brighter for McLaren. The new livery was unveiled without a new title sponsor to match, but it's early days yet for sponsorship guru and new McLaren executive director Zak Brown.
While there were no big ticket deals to report on the day, since the start of the calendar year McLaren have announced a substantial number of smaller deals and partnerships. The highest profile, of course, was the BP-Castrol partnership announced earlier this month, providing Woking with custom oils and lubricants designed with the Honda power unit in mind -- much as BP are also doing with Renault.
Mercedes' successful collaboration with Petronas has become something of a blueprint here -- Shell may have innovated the concept with Ferrari, but that partnership is now so long-running it has become part of the motor-racing furniture. Custom-designed fuels and lubricants have become ever more essential in recent years, with marginal gains and extended wear making a significant difference over the course of a modern F1 season.
Further technical collaborations announced since the beginning of 2017 include a new link-up with additives manufacturer Stratasys. Additive manufacturing is currently a growing field of development in F1 -- while rapid prototyping of certain parts has become par for the course, some elements (such as suspension components, for example) cannot currently be manufactured to within the appropriate tolerances. F1 has become a leader in R&D for the additives manufacturing industry, and creating a working partnership with an active company should provide both outfits with those lovely symbiotic benefits that now form part and parcel of the process of on-track improvements.
General impressions from the launch itself are mainly that this is the beginning of a new era at McLaren. The launch itself was held in the McLaren Thought Centre, an incredibly Orwellian name for what proved to be the underground mission control of my world domination dreams. Few of those in attendance had any idea the building even existed, despite several members of the audience having followed the team since before they moved to Woking...
From the outside, the team is the same glossy and professional outfit they always have been. Under the surface, however, it looks as though the Woking racers are keeping optimistic about 2017 while knowing that it is fundamentally a year of transition.
In one year's time I expect to be writing about the MCL33 and its headline-grabbing title sponsor, and about the technological preparations underway with revolutionary new materials and approaches to aero. For now, however, McLaren are a team busy getting down to the serious business of laying solid foundations for the future.